should be let loose. Patrick Grace calculated an impunity; but his confidence in the power and terrors of the confederacy with which he was associated was mistaken. A brave, and a religious man, whose name was Philip Mara, was present at the murder. He was standing beside his employer, Mr. Chadwick, and saw Grace put him deliberately to death. Grace was well aware that Mara had seen him, but did not believe that he would dare to give evidence against him. It is proba ble, too, that he conjectured that Mara coincided with him in his ethics of assassination, and applauded the proceeding. Mara, however, who was a moral and virtuous man, was horrorstruck by what he had beheld; and, under the influence of conscientious feelings, gave immediate information to a magistrate. Patrick Grace was arrested, and tried at the summer assizes of 1827.

I was not present at his trial, but have heard from good authority that he displayed a fearless demeanor; and that when he was convicted upon the evidence of Philip Mara, he declared that before a year should go by he should have vengeance in the grave. He was ordered to be executed near the spot where his misdeed had been perpetrated. This was a signal mistake, and produced an effect exactly the reverse of what was contemplated. The lower orders looked upon him as a martyr; and his deportment, personal beauty, and undaunted courage, rendered him an object of deep interest and sympathy upon the scaffold. He was attended by a body of troops to the old Abbey of Holycross, where not less than fifteen thousand people assembled to behold him.

The site of the execution rendered the spectacle a most striking one. The Abbey of Holycross is the finest and most venerable monastic ruin in Ireland. Most travellers turn from their way to survey it, and leave it with a deep impression of its solemnity and grandeur. A vast multitude was assembled round the scaffold. The prisoner was brought forward in the midst of the profound silence of the people. He ascended and surveyed them; and looked upon the ruins of the edifice which had once been dedicated to the worship of his religion, and to the sepulchres of the dead which were strewed among its aisles.

EXECUTION OF PATRICK GRACE.

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and had been for ages as he was in a few minutes about to be. It was not known whether he would call for vengeance from his survivors, or for mercy from Heaven. His kindred, his close friends, his early companions, all that he loved, and all to whom he was dear, were around him, and nothing, except a universal sob from his female relatives, disturbed the awful taciturnity that prevailed. At the side of Patrick Grace stood the priest the mild admonitor of the heart, the soother of affliction, and the preceptor of forgiveness—who attended him in the last office of humanity, and who proved by the result how well he had performed it.

To the disappointment of the people, Patrick Grace expressed himself profoundly contrite; and, although he evinced no fear of death, at the instance of the Roman Catholic clergyman who attended him, implored the people to take warning by his example. In a few moments after, he left existence. But the effect of his execution will be estimated by this remarkable incident. His gloves were handed by one of his relations to an old man of the name of John Russel, as a keepsake. Russel drew them on, and declared at the same time that he should wear them "till Paddy Grace was revenged;" and revenged he soon afterward was, within the time which he had himself prescribed for retribution, and in a manner which is as much calculated to excite astonishment at the strangeness, as detestation for the atrocity of the crime, of which I proceed to narrate the details.

Philip Mara was removed by Government from the country. It was perfectly obvious that, if he had continued to sojourn in Tipperary, his life would have been taken speedily, and at all hazards, away. It was decided that all his kindred should be exterminated. He had three brothers; and the bare consanguinity with a traitor (for his crime was treason) was regarded as a sufficient offence to justify their immolation. If they could not procure his own blood for the purposes of sacrifice, it was however something to make libation of that which flowed from the same source. The crimes of the Irish are derived from the same origin as their virtues. They have pow erful domestic attachments. Their love and devotion to their

kindred instruct them in the worst expedients of atrocity. Knowing the affection which Mara had for his brothers, they found the way to his heart in the kindest instincts of humanity; and, from the consciousness of the pain which the murder of "his mother's children" would inflict, determined that he should endure it.

It must be owned that there is a dreadful policy in this system. The Government may withdraw their witnesses from the country, and afford them protection; but their wives, their offspring, their parents, their brothers, sisters, nay their remotest relatives, can not be secure, and the vengeance of the ferocious peasantry, if defrauded of its more immediate and natural object, will satiate itself with some other victim. It was in conformity with these atrocious principles of revenge that the murder of the brothers of Philip Mara was resolved upon. Strange to tell, the whole body of the peasantry in the neighborhood of Rath Cannon, and far beyond it, entered into a league, for the perpetration of this abominable crime; and while the individuals who were marked out for massacre were unconscious of what was going forward, scarcely a man, woman, or child, looked them in the face who did not know that they were marked out for death.

They were masons by trade, and were employed in building the barrack at Rath Cannon, on the spot where Chadwick had been assassinated, and where the funeral of Patrick Grace (for so his execution was called) had been performed. The peasantry looked in all probability with an evil eye upon every man who had put his hand to this obnoxious work; but their main object was the extermination of Philip Mara's brothers. They were three in number-Daniel, Laurence, and Timothy. On the first of October they were at work, with an apprentice in the mason trade, at the barrack at Rath Cannon. The name of this apprentice was Hickey. In the evening, about five o'clock, they left off their work, and were returning homeward, when eight men with arms rushed upon them. They were fired at; but the firearms of the assassins were in such bad condition, that the discharge of their rude musketry had no effect. Laurence, Timothy, and the apprentice, fled in different direc

MURDER OF DANIEL MARA

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tions, and escaped. Daniel Mara lost his presence of mind, and instead of taking the same route as the others, ran into the house of a poor widow. He was pursued by the murderers, one of whom got in by a small window, while the others burst through the door, and with circumstances of great savageness put him to death.

The intelligence of this event produced a still greater sensation than the murder of Chadwick; and was as much the subject of comment as some great political incident, fraught with national consequences, in the metropolis. The Government lost no time in issuing proclamations, offering a reward of two thousand pounds sterling for information which should bring the assassins to justice. The magnitude of the sum induced the hope that its temptation would be found irresistible to poverty and destitution so great as that which prevails among the class of ordinary malefactors. It was well known that hundreds had cognizance of the offence; and it was concluded that, among so numerous a body, the tender of so large a reward could not fail to offer an effectual allurement. Weeks, however, passed over without the communication of intelligence of any kind. Several persons were arrested on suspicion, but were afterward discharged, as no more than mere conjecture could be adduced against them.

Mr. Doherty, the Solicitor-General, proceeded to the county of Tipperary, in order to investigate the transaction; but for a considerable time all his scrutiny was without avail. At length, however, an individual of the name of Thomas Fitzgerald was committed to jail upon a charge of highway robbery, and, in order to save his life, furnished evidence upon which the Government was enabled to pierce into the mysteries of delinquency. The moment Fitzgerald unsealed his lips, a numerous horde of malefactors were taken up, and further revealments were made under the influence which the love of life, and not of money, exercised over their minds. The assizes came on; and on Monday, the 31st of March [1828], Patrick Lacy and John Walsh were placed at the bar, and to the indictment for the murder of Daniel Mara pleaded not guilty. The Court presented a very imposing spectacle. The whole

body of the gentry of Tipperary were assembled in order to witness a trial on which the security of life and property was to depend. The box which is devoted to the grand-jury was thronged with the aristocracy of the county, who manifested an anxiety far stronger than the trial of an ordinary culprit is accustomed to produce. An immense crowd of the peasantry was gathered round the dock. All appeared to feel a deep interest in what was to take place, but it was easy to perceive in the diversity of solicitude which was expressed upon their faces, the degrees of sympathy which connected them with the prisoners at the bar. The more immediate kindred of the malefactors were distinguishable, by their profound but still emotion, from those who were engaged in the same extensive organization, and were actuated by a selfish sense that their personal interests were at stake, without having their more tender affections involved in the result.

But besides the relatives and confederates of the prisoners, there was a third class among the spectators, in which another shade of sympathy was observable. These were the mass of the peasantry, who had no direct concern with the transaction, but whose principles and habits made them well-wishers to the men who had put their lives in peril for what was regarded as the common cause. Through the crowd were dispersed a number of policemen, whose green regimentals, high caps, and glittering bayonets, made them conspicuous, and brought them into contrast with the peasants by whom they were surrounded. On the table stood the governor of the jail, with his ponderous keys, which designated his office, and presented to the mind associations which aided the effect of the scene.

Mr. Justice Moore appeared in his red robes lined with black, and intimated by his aspect that he anticipated the discharge of a dreadful duty. Beside him was placed the Earl of Kingston,* who had come from the neighboring county of Cork to

* Mr. Sheil's description of the late Earl of Kingston is very accurate, but words can not paint the brutality of this man's appearance. When I was a lad, I often saw him, as he was Chairman of the Magistrates at the Sessions, in Fermoy, where I was educated-one schoolmate being Francis Hincks, now of Canada, and the schoolmaster being Dr. Hincks, his father. The Ear